Abstract:

Piske, MacKay and Flege (2001) note that, in general, second language (L2) learners have difficulties in the acquisition of contrasts that are not found in their first languages (L1). Specifically, Baker and Smith (2010), Levy and Law (2010), among others, point out that Anglophones have difficulty in producing and perceiving the French round vowel /y/ (e.g., “u” in “tu” /ty/ ‘you’) due to its absence in the English vowel inventory. In this study, we examine the impact of the pedagogical use of mobile automatic speech recognition software (ASR) on the phonological acquisition of the French vowel /y/ in production and perception.

The study took place in two universities in Montreal (Canada), and the English L1 participants were recruited from introductory courses in “Correction phonétique du Français”. The participants were beginner French students with no previous experience with “corrective phonetics” and exposure to speech recognition software. They were divided into three experimental groups: (1) the ASR Group used a commercial (but free) ASR application in their mobile devices (e.g., iPhone, iPod Touch) to complete weekly pronunciation tasks, with immediate written visual feedback provided by the software; (2) the Non-ASR Group completed the same weekly pronunciation tasks in individual weekly sessions with a teacher, who provided immediate oral feedback using recast and repetitions; finally, (3) the Control Group participated in weekly individual meetings “to practice their conversation skills” with a teacher, who provided no pronunciation feedback. The study followed a pretest/posttest design and lasted three months. ANOVA results indicate that the ASR Group outperformed the other groups in /y/ production, but not in perception. The discussion of the findings will highlight how ASR technology can be used to complement and enhance the teaching of L2 pronunciation.

References:
Baker, W. & Smith, L. C. (2010) The Impact of L2 Dialect on Learning French Vowels: Native English Speakers Learning Québécois and European French. La revue canadienne des langues vivantes, 66, 711-738
Levy, E. S. & Law II, F. F. (2010). Production of French vowels by American-English learners of French: Language experience, consonantal context, and the perception-production relationship. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 128, 1290-1305.
Piske, T., MacKay, I., & Flege, J. (2001). Factors affecting degree of foreign accent in an L2: A review. Journal of Phonetics, 29, 191-215.

Keywords:

Automatic speech recognition (ASR), pronunciation teaching, French phonology, production, perception.